Jack
by Leicontis
Summary: Inspecting the Dreaming for damage after his imprisonment, Dream witnesses the ending of a man and the beginning of a monster. A Halloween one-shot.


**Disclaimer: If you recognize anything here, it doesn't belong to me.**

 **A/N: Just a little Halloween drabble.**

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With his treasures reclaimed and the Dreaming finally beginning to truly heal from his unwilling absence, Dream took the time to wander through his realm, seeing with his own eyes how things had changed during his imprisonment and checking for any signs of damage or trouble. It was near the end of this inspection tour that something unexpected happened.

He was making his way through one of the more distant regions of the Dreaming, when to his shock a human stumbled across his path. While the nature of this particular area made time a somewhat vague concept, Morpheus could still state with near-certainty that it had been decades if not centuries since the last mortal of any species had wandered out this far. This region had been nearly deserted for a very long time, as even the boldest of nightmares tended to shy away, so the presence of the man meandering around before him was perplexing.

Given recent events, Dream's first thought was to look more deeply at the area nearby, in case some new passage or soft place had opened up and might disgorge further dreamers, but while details of this region were ever-fluid, its substance and nature remained as unchanging as they had been for ages.

This, of course, meant that closer scrutiny of the wayward dreamer was needed. As the increasingly pale human stumbled hither, thither, and yon, the Prince of Stories gazed at and through him. He saw the man's body, injured and unconscious, being washed into a harbor in a rush of effluent from a chemical factory, and realized that some combination of physical proximity and the damage even now being done to the mortal's brain had briefly attuned him to dreams beyond his own.

The Shaper watched as concussion and chemistry continued to run their course, and the dazed human before him seemed to regain a bit of lucidity. While the man seemed not to see the ruler of the Dreaming, his eyes lit upon a path that veered off into the darkness between what might have been trees, but could also have been vast stone columns, or perhaps corals and anemones of tremendous size, or any of a dozen other things. Nailed to the nearest of these was a sign which the dreamer gazed at in confusion and incomprehension.

Knowing his realm as he did, Morpheus knew where the path led, and doubted this mortal's mind and body could survive it in their current state. " _ **I would advise against following that path.**_ " The man glanced at Dream, perplexed and clearly a bit surprised at this 'new' arrival. " _ **If you will come with me, I can take you back where you belong.**_ "

"Where I belong?" the man scoffed, his voice high and harsh. " _I'll_ be the one to decide where I belong, _thanks!_ " After a mocking and theatrical bow, he turned and strode down the dark path. Dream let him go; the Creator placed tremendous value on free will, and so while his command over the residents of the Dreaming was near-absolute, he could do little more than advise and counsel the dreamers unless they posed a threat to his realm or its inhabitants. He could not stop this mortal man from making what was likely a mortal error.

"AAAUUGH!"

It was only moments before the screams started. This did not surprise him; no sane mortal, nor even most that were not sane, could readily withstand what awaited in that place.

"GHEAAAH!"

What surprised him was that they were continuing. Even many gods would be little more than gibbering wrecks by now, and Dream would have expected the man's already weakened body to fail under such stress, but somehow it just went on.

"EEEAAAAHHHGha-"

Meanwhile, the mortal's body continued to be twisted by the toxic melange it had been bathed in.

" ha- hahah-"

His skin had turned as pale as Dream's own, but of a more unnatural shade. His lank brown hair had become stiff bristles the dark green of seaweed, and his lips the red of freshly-spilled blood.

"hahah! HAHAHA!

Even now, deeply unconscious in spite of his mind's presence in the Dreaming, the man's lips pulled back in a sardonic rictus.

"HEEHEEHOOOOHAHAHAHAHA!"

As the screams of what was once Jack Napier turned into shrill, manic laughter, the Shaper looked again at the sign. He knew the man had read it - the Dreaming stripped away all language barriers. The words, like the sign itself, were _old_ , ancient even by the standards of the Endless:

 _Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn_

 _In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming_

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 **A/N: I had this idea several years ago actually, it's only now that I'm actually posting fics that I decided to write it up myself. For those that missed the increasingly non-subtle hints, Jack Napier is (in some continuities) the original name of the Joker. The Sandman series takes place in the DCU, and Batman is loaded with references to and in some cases elements of H.P. Lovecraft (and a figure in the Sandman prequel comics looks suspiciously like it could be the Dream of the Old Ones), so with all of those links it just seemed to make sense to bring them all together for one tale and give the Joker yet another possible origin story.**


End file.
